Richard Milward was born in Middlesbroughin 1984. His debut novel,Apples, was publishedin 2007.

9 780571 242252

ISBN 978-0-571-24225-2

uk £10.99 rrp www.faber.co.uk

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Cover design by Faber. Cover illustration by Wallzo

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Spanning one dynamite paragraph, Ten STorey Love Songfollows Bobby the Artist’s rise to stardom and horrific drug psychosis, Johnnie’s attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing ellen in bed, and Alan Blunt, a forty-year-old truck driver who spends a worrying amount of time patrolling the grounds of the local primary school.

Bobby – the so-called ‘love-child of Keith Haring and Basquiat’, holed up in a Middlesbrough tower block – works on hiscanvases under the influence of pills-on-toast, acid-on-crackers and Francis Bacon. When Bent Lewis, a famous art dealer from that London appears, Bobby and friends are sent on a sweaty adventure of self-discovery, hedonism and violence involvinga 2.5cm-head claw hammer.

A love song to a loveless Teesside and a portrait of a deeplydysfunctional, creative and drug-sodden world, Ten STorey Love Song is a ferocious slab of concrete prose peppered with beauty and delivered with glorious abandon.

‘Milward has that rare gift of being able to capture and distil an entire generation in a single, simple sentence. Brilliant. very very funny and utterly original.’ Helen Walsh

‘It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read about being young, working class and British.’ Irvine Welsh on APPLeS

Ten Storey Love Song

Richard Milward

First published in 2009by Faber and Faber Ltd

3 Queen Square London wc1n 3au

Typeset by Faber and Faber LtdPrinted in England by CPI Mackays, Chatham

All rights reserved© Richard Milward, 2009

The right of Richard Milward to be identified as author of thiswork has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by wayof trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circu-lated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding

or cover other than that in which it is published and without asimilar condition including this condition being imposed on the

subsequent purchaser

A CIP record for this bookis available from the British Library

isbn 978–0–571–24225–2

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You must always be intoxicated. On wine, poetry orvirtue, as you wish. But you must get drunk.

Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), poet and randy dandy

‘Hello,’ says the wallpaper. Bobby the Artist scratcheshis eyeballs. He can’t sleep. He sits on the sofa arm,argyle sweater pulled hunchback over the top of hishead, having a conversation with his living room. ‘Goto fucking sleep,’ he replies to the wallpaper. He sighs.It’s that tail-end of the acid – he’s no longer seeing thecat from Dr Seuss in place of the lamp-stand, butthere’s still loads of annoying thinking to be done.Being an artist, Bobby the Artist’s only really in it forthe visuals – earlier on him and Georgie danced roundthe flat to Bardo Pond (‘Tantric Porno’ and ‘The HighFrequency’ are two groovy numbers off an album fullof noise), Bobby watching the knobbly skirting-boardgradually form a zoetrope involving all these obscurefroggy and bunny characters, and it even had a begin-ning, a middle, and an end. Usually Bobby the Artistwould jump up and paint all this madness, but tonighthe couldn’t be bothered. There’s nothing better thanGeorgie in a dancy happy mood, the only downsidebeing she never joins in any of the drug-taking. Backon the sofa arm, Bobby breathes into his jumper sleeve,glancing at his girlfriend sleeping peacefully on thefuchsia cushions. He rests his head against the wall –two hours earlier it was soft as marshmallows, now it’s

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a pain in the neck – and there’s no chance him joiningGeorgie in the land of Nod.You just cannot seem toswitch off. He stares wide-eyed at dawn sneaking inthrough the window, wondering deeply deeply wherehim and Georgie are going, whether he’ll ever getfamous, whether he’ll ever get to sleep, where the Catin the Hat went. He yanks the green sweater downfrom his forehead, then strides about the room feelingirritated, kicking the empty sweety wrappers roundand round the carpet. The flat’s a mess, and being onLSD it’s quite hard to remember how it happened toget like that. All Bobby clearly remembers is twirlinground with Georgie, her drunk on cheapo vodka, himtripping his numbskull off. Twirling twirling twirling.Whirling curtains.At one point they’d been dancing somuch Bobby’s hunger came back unexpectedly and hehad to make pills-on-toast for himself in the kitchen.Here’s the recipe for pills-on-toast: 2 crushed ecstasy pills,1 slice of toast (butter optional).Yawn! Smoke-rings loop-the-loop past like dreamy spectacles. Where did thatwhole twenty-deck disappear to? Bobby considersgoing across the road for more fags, but the prospect ofbeing taunted by scallywags while still slightly trippingfeels daunting, and in any case he hasn’t got any money.His last pound coin went on a paintbrush yesterdayfrom Jarreds, and Johnnie from upstairs sorted him twoblotters and two ecstasies on tick, and the idea was this:get wrecked and paint one two three four (or more)masterpieces. Hallucinogens are perfect for that nutty,colourful art no one can explain, but now Bobby feelsa bit distraught for not doing anything, and now theacid’s starting to wear off. He looks at Georgie breath-

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ing louder and louder on the settee, her eyelashespressed shut like wee Venus flytraps, and with maxi-mum effort he starts gathering his acrylics together.Georgie’s his Muse, and there’s tons of Georgie canvas-es strewn around the flat in various poses and multi-colours – the best ones, like ‘Stripy Socks’ (45x35cm)and ‘Georgie Girl’ (50x50cm), are hung above the tellyin lime green and pastelly blue. Bobby the Artist crawlsabout the floor for a scrap of A1, then wallops brightpink across it with a six-inch DIY brush, slopping iteverywhere. He ruins the carpet.Then he goes throughto the bedroom to huff some Lynx Africa, spraying itinto one of the dirtier argyle sweaters: the red one has-n’t been washed for a bit. Smothering his face in thedeodorant and sucking it all cold into his lungs, afterthree seconds Bobby feels a bit spacey again and floatsback through to the living space, the colours in hishead nice and bright again for a short while. He cross-legs himself in front of Georgie, suddenly spewing upeyelashes and blue hair-bands and fuchsia blocks allacross the paper. Georgie’s dressed in a blue and whitesailor’s outfit – often she plays up to her Muse status,her and Bobby the Artist flouncing around town instupid attire and usually only to buy a new oil pastel ora jam-jar from Lidl. Now and then they get abusivecomments from nobodies with buzzcuts, but they’rewell loved in Peach House and on the estate – Bobby’sa bit like a doggy, quite dozy and partial to falling inlove with everybody; Georgie’s more like an apprehen-sive kitten: she loves to have fun, but it’s got to be withthe right person. She’s often seen gawping at thesweety counter in the newsagent across Longlands

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Road, with her disco-ball eyes. Bobby the Artistchucks a jelly-babies bag out from under his bum,adding a bit of wacky detail to Georgie’s face – spikymascara, chewy lips, and a thought-bubble coming outof her head with a mermaid in it.There was quite anoceanic feel to the trip tonight – swimming in the car-pet, imagining the doorbells were seagulls, etc. etc. –and he blames it on Georgie’s sailor gear. He continuesdoing the Lynx while he paints, but after a while youget immune to it and Bobby finally feels the tirednessslip over him. He’s so shattered. It seems like such aneffort just to mix a decent phthalo turquoise, and hishand doesn’t have that usual fluidity or purposefulness– in fact Georgie looks more like a blob with eyes.Bobby the Artist screams inside – coming down offacid is such a disappointing feeling. How awful it is tofloat back to a grey, drab world when you’ve just seenhappy rainbow Munchkin land. It’s frustrating, andBobby tosses ‘Blob with Eyes’ (58x81cm) to one side,his head hurting from all the annoyance and wretchedthinking. Georgie pipes up now and then with the oddsnore, and Bobby wonders what they get out of eachother anyway – all Georgie does is go to work, comehome moody, nibble a few sweets and fall to sleep,though she does look good in a ballerina costume.AllBobby does is splash a bit of paint around in an argylesweater getting mortalled. But all that negative think-ing is a killer – Bobby doesn’t believe in being sad, hewants everyone to get on with each other (and off theirheads), and the temptation’s miles too strong to phoneup Johnnie and score more white doves. Some ofBobby’s best work comes from an MDMA-fuelled

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binge, all colourful and smiley and demented, althoughhe does sometimes end up making love to the canvas-es. Bobby the Artist stands by the window, gazing atoccasional shiny toy cars whizzing past way downthere, dialling up Johnnie’s mobile, but he stands therefor a whole two minutes and Johnnie doesn’t answer.Johnnie feels it go off in his Admiral bottoms, but hereckons it’s probably his girlfriend Ellen and in any casehe’s got his eye on some youths over there with quitea flashy mobile and all. It’s freezing out in the morninglight, and Johnnie whacks up his collar as he dartsacross Kedward Avenue and squares up to the lads.‘Give us that, you daft cunts,’ he woofs, nodding at thefancy Siemens. After Johnnie got kicked off the dolefive months back, he got self-employed as a full-timethief and professional let-down. In his younger yearsJohnnie used to march around the estate slapping any-one who looked at him and, like a lot of the lads in hisyear, he was the Hardest Lad in His Year. But he’s notespecially macho or psychotic or unstable – in factsince he met Ellen he’s calmed down slightly, and forexample he loves painting pap paintings with Bobby orfixing Alan Blunt the Cunt’s creaky door or helping hisNanna do the shop every Thursday. It’s just a shittystate of affairs that everyone needs money. The ladslook at him with their best don’t-fuck-with-me(please) faces, but they can both tell they might be infor a pasting. ‘Do youse wanna get battered or what?’he enquires.The lads don’t, really. Johnnie roughs themup anyhow, pushing the two kids round the block, giv-ing them little kiddy-slaps now and then for his ownentertainment. Strangely, Johnnie hopes they turn on

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him – giving him an excuse to pull out all his bestmoves – but the boys are sort of fannies and they juststand around looking a bit gutted. After a whileJohnnie takes the flashy phone and £7.18 off the lads,then sprints off back down Kedward. At four in themorning there’s hardly going to be a copper about, butnow and then they do patrol Cargo Fleet Lane soJohnnie makes a beeline straight for Peach House. He’sbuzzing – thievery still gives him that burst of satisfac-tion, plus the sevenish quid should keep Ellen happyfor sevenish minutes, say if they get a pizza or some-thing later on. Johnnie grins, glancing up at the tower– it used to be dog muck and Sugar Puff colour but inthe 2000s the council tarted up all five of the blocks,and in this particular instant Peach House looks verygorgeous, like pink and yellow ice cream on top of araspberry ripple sunrise. Instead of stalling for the lift,Johnnie darts up the stairway past 2C’s knackeredfridge waiting to go to the fridge graveyard, and hedodges a binbag here, there and everywhere.There’s anodd sock on floor three. There’s half-eaten chips onfloor three and a half.When Johnnie gets to floor fourhe’s greeted by a crazy person hurling a crazy paintingdown the stairwell in total disgust. ‘Now then, Bobby,’he smiles, ‘what you up to?’ Bobby the Artist blinksquite wildish at Johnnie, all dishevelled in hisgreen/red-trim jumper and gurning. ‘Ha ha, oh how’sit going? I’m pissed off like, can’t fucking paint again,can I . . .’ Scratching his veiny neck, Johnnie slants hishead at the crumpled ‘Blob with Eyes’ (58x81cm) land-ing halfway down the staircase. Still wet, Georgie liesthere on the sofa on the ocean on the paper on the

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step.‘As if!’ Johnnie says with his eyebrows,‘it’s fuckingmint. God, is that Georgie? She looks dead relaxed. Ilike it, me.’ One thing Johnnie misses in his life is relax-ation. Having a hundred pills tucked in the vitamin tinand various other Class As playing hide-and-seek aboutthe flat makes for an unsettled young man. Plus havingno income means he’s constantly thinking about thenext steal and the next one and the next one – Johnniegave up robbing his parents three weeks back after henabbed £30 for the teddy-bear acid, and all the profitshad to go on rent and even then it didn’t stop thebailiffs coming round but Johnnie didn’t open the doorto them and eventually paid them off a week later afterkneecapping a youngster who owed £70 ticky. On topof that, he’s stressed about Ellen – they’ve been togeth-er about seven months, and he loves her to death, buthe’s completely plagued with jealousy. If she hasn’tphoned for a day or two he instantly conjures up animage of her fucking one of the scummy rats she hangsaround with. If they’re at a party, Ellen can’t talk toanother boy without Johnnie getting the hump. Hetrusts her, but part of what attracted him to Ellen in thefirst place was the nymphomania and her generalbrassy, come-hither attitude. If he ever caught her shag-ging someone else, that cunt on the other side of hercunt would be absolutely fucked. That’s why whenJohnnie sees a portrait of Georgie all sleepy and con-tent on a pink background, his heart expands into a bigjuicy strawberry. ‘Can I get a picture of it?’ he asks,leaning the painting upright, getting a bit of stickyacrylic on his fingers. ‘I just twocked this mobile,’ hegoes on, unleashing the Siemens. ‘It’s got a camera and

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that.’Bobby the Artist smiles while Johnnie figures howto work it, but even so the painting’s totally dead tohim. He believes in spontaneity, madness, pure psychicautomatism, childish colours and sloppy brushstrokes,but this one’s just a mess. He sighs while Johnnie snapsthe disaster, although it is always nice to receive a com-pliment. There were these people in the 1940s whocalled themselves CoBrA and they believed in paintingwith that total abandon like a little child, but of courseyou do run the risk of making a massive boo-boo.‘Youdon’t need a new phone, by any chance?’ Johnnie asks,scarpering the rest of the way up the stairs. Bobby theArtist shakes his mad brown mop-top. He stands silent-ly for a bit weighing up the prospect of forcing sleepor saying fuck it and carrying on working, and in thefuzzy dawn he figures the most rock-and-roll optionwould be, ‘Johnnie, you couldn’t sort me another cou-ple doves on tick, could you?’ Johnnie feigns a look ofyou-fucking-bastard, but he loves Bobby the Artist andit’s been a pretty fruitful night in terms of wheelingand dealing, and he just smiles and tosses over a fewleft-over halves and crumby bits from his tracky-toppocket. Bobby grins and stuffs his face with the doves,although he soon realises his mouth’s like sandpaperand the pills won’t actually go down the chute, so hefumbles into the flat and into the kitchen and has totapwater them down a few goes. But it’s worth it –almost straight away the placebo effect of putting ecsta-sy between your lips perks him up, and despite theclock saying 5.31 Bobby decides he might go wakeGeorgie up and try to paint her properly. Georgie’s nothappy. She’s been working all day behind the sweety

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counter at Bhs, and the vodka and sheer shatterednessof it all had her in one of those black-holey bottomlesssleeps. She was dreaming of fairgrounds and carousels,not mermaids, imagining her and Bobby riding plastichorses high above the housing estate like a scruffierMary Poppins. Bobby the Artist grabs her by the shoul-ders and gives her a little shake, but it’s like beingdragged from dream into reality through a mile ofgravel or a thornbush. Her massive eyelashes part, andshe glares up at Bobby with gigantic throbbing peep-ers. ‘What?’ she snaps. Bobby the Artist smiles blissful-ly, the love-doves already sending a sparkle in one ortwo veins, and he answers, ‘Sorry, pet, it’s just I scoredmore pills off Johnnie and, like . . . do you wanna dosome poses for me? Painting and that?’ If there’s onething that annoys Georgie, it’s her boyfriend gettingover-excited about a teeny-weeny tablet. She hatesthem – what does it say about your life if you keephaving to gloss it in druggy lovey-doveyness? Georgie’sperfectly happy with her life as it is, even though it wasmurder at work that afternoon. Mr Hawkson, her boss,keeps scolding her just because she’s easy-going andcheerful on the counter.These kids of about age elevencame in around dinner-break and, even though theywere clearly pilfering the milk-bottles and fizzy cher-ries and scoffing them on the sly, Georgie thought itwas nice to see them enjoying themselves.The cherrieswere a fine choice. Hawkson could see it all unfoldingfrom his hands-on-hips stance over by Womenswear,and he marched over and gave Georgie a bollocking.He’s a prick – he’s in his forties and apparently he’s gota ‘partner’, but he still enjoys perving on Georgie in

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the terrible stripey blouse. He’ll never fire her –Hawkson’s never seen anyone over twenty so enthusi-astic about sweets before in his life. For Georgie sweetsare her only vice – she’s grown out of listing her topten confectionery each month (the last instalment hadrhubarb and custards knock white jazzies off the topspot), but much of the mess around 4E looks like a U-bomb hit a Haribo factory. She flings a few emptywrappers out from her bum-crack and elbows,although it sounds like the Smarties packet has some-thing left in it so she munches those fellows for a bit.‘Bobby, I’m knackered,’ she moans, her brain pulsingand threatening to run out of her nose, ears andmouth, like something from those manky manga filmsBobby used to watch. It was his cousin from Estonwho made him watch all the video nasties, and Bobbyremembers vividly screaming and squeezing his facedown the back of the sofa and bad-dreaming after see-ing Driller Killer and Hellraiser aged nine and three-quarters. That bit where the man’s face gets stretchedand ripped off by hooks had him in tears for twoweeks. Funny, though, how Un Chien Andalou doesn’thave the same aaargh-factor (that insane Buñuel/Dalífilm with split eyeballs and severed hands, and nuns),since it’s really a horror film too, but Salvador Dalí’s anartist, you see, and Clive Barker’s just a sicko. Shivering,Bobby the Artist props one of his ready-stretched can-vases against the coffee table (not that they drink cof-fee any more – Bobby had a horrible experience neck-ing loads of espressos while on the Billy Whizz, findinghimself fidgeting and spasming for approximatelyforty-eight hours), and gives Georgie the puppy-dog

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eyes. Or the ecstasy eyes.Whenever Bobby needs can-vases making, he snorts an amphetamine mountainover the course of a day, coming down in the eveningsurrounded by perfectly stretched frames and with blis-ters on his fingers. Such a hard-working drug! Bobbyleaps and puts Galaxie 500 on moderately high vol-ume, the guitars feeling particularly swoopy-loopy thisdaybreak. He starts to feel the smudgy rush of ecstasyspread through him; the perfect feeling for paintingyour girlfriend, he thinks. Sometimes he doesn’t evenrealise he’s irritating her. Georgie just sits there, notreally fussed about posing, but the Smarties are abonus. Lots of blue ones and all. She watches herboyfriend through slitted eyes, all those tell-tale signs ofa man coming up such as manic eyeballs, can’t-keep-stillness, and his jowls getting more and more dement-ed. Bobby’s feeling brilliant – he washes a brush, thensketches Georgie really large and cute and sailorish ina tiny fuchsia boat. He blocks her in with fleshy pinkand navy blue, putting love-hearts in her eyes, then herolls around the carpet laughing at it. ‘Voilà!’ he slob-bers. Georgie’s not impressed – all she got woken upfor was a five-minute splasharound, not some highlyconsidered jaw-dropping coup de grâce. Speaking ofjaws, by seven o’clock Bobby’s is all over the place.AndGeorgie’s still knackered. At least she hasn’t got worktoday – she thinks about slithering next door to go tobed, but Bobby the Artist keeps jabbering on in theswing of his druggy buzz. ‘Aww, Georgie, you’re gor-geous. I don’t want to be a dickhead and that, youknow, like all sloppy and that, but God you were madefor painting.You know Modigliani? Well I feel like that,

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you know; getting wrecked and just painting all thesebirds and that . . . not that I knock around with othergirls like, don’t worry . . . I just mean you’re mint . . .like . . .’ he blabs, frothing a bit at the mouth. At themoment he feels utter wonder and contentment sittingwith Georgie, like nothing else matters to him in thebig wide world, but as it always does when he finallycomes down around ten o’clock (and Georgie’s longgone, a sailor-sized lump in the bed next-door), hewishes she was more outgoing and would swallowdrugs with him instead of just sweeties. It’s totallydepressing falling back to earth for the umpteenthtime. Bump. Bobby the Artist sits on his own on thepink couch, still wired, but now the white morningoutside just makes him queasy. He scours the carpet forany sort of intoxicant (Nescafé would do), but there’snot even any Smarties left. ‘Grrrr!’ he says in his head.Unfortunately it’s time to call it a day. Sniffing, Bobbypops through to the cool bedroom and changes intohis kangaroo pyjamas, as is tradition after every long-haul inner flight. Speaking of which, he dribbles him-self onto the edge of the bed and puts on PrimalScream’s own beautiful ‘Inner Flight’, and the comfort’sexhausting. Georgie makes a little gurgle as the songkicks in, and it’s actually in the same key. She rolls overbut doesn’t wake up, and for five minutes Bobby justenjoys being there with her and the song, and hestrokes her stray pinky shoulder poking out from thebronze bedcover. An eensy-weensy part of him wantsto rouse Georgie again and have ravenous sex with her,but he doesn’t want to push it. In any case, she looks soholy and adorable all wrapped up, it’s nice enough just

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to be sat in her presence. But sleep’s still off the cardsfor Bobby for at least a couple more hours, and he justconcretes himself to the duvet and stares at morningstretching until then. Georgie, unaware he’s there, hassprawled herself across seventy-nine per cent of thebed but Bobby still feels happy perched precariouslyon the frame edge. He lets his mind wander, eyesclosed, where quite a few trippy pictures still hang onthe backs of his eyelids. Faint multicolour boxes unfoldand repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeatand repeat, and it keeps him entertained for a bit beforebedtime. Little spirographs rise and fall, easing Bobbythe Artist into slumber with their soft swirly twirls. Fora second he thinks he sees his face on the Haribo kid’sbody, and all of a sudden he wonders what it’d be liketo be famous – he’d rather see his face on Frieze mag-azine, mind you. Imagine going to all those posh par-ties and sniffing all the free drugs! He dreams of get-ting a £1,000-a-day coke habit. But the opportunityseems so far away when you’re holed up on the fourthfloor of some tower block no one’s even heard of,overlooking bumpy tarmac and unhappy little shops,though if Jean-Michel Basquiat could come out of agarbage can with rubbish paintings and still get famousthen so could he. Basquiat’s his big influence, just likesmack was for Jean-Michel. There’s this painting,‘Bombero’, of Jean’s girlfriend giving him a thumpand, although Georgie would never lay a finger onhim, Bobby can kind of relate to it. Georgie kicksBobby in the face every time she goes to bed early ina strop. Every time she scolds Bobby for having toomuch of a good time. Every time she goes to work.

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Every time she frowns. From day one they’ve beenperfectly happy together, though Bobby sort ofthought she could be weaned onto drugs or at leasthave her arm twisted once or twice. Georgie’s dad’sbeen clocking-on at BASF for twenty-five years (theygave him a stereo to celebrate), and it’s his daft influ-ence making her think you have to work so you cansurvive so you can die sometime later on. Bobby theArtist’s ethic is: do what you want and enjoy it or else!But saying that, it’s not really that much fun sitting nextto a corpse at noon o’clock with nothing to do.Withthe teeniest dots of energy still left in his system there’sthe teeniest window of opportunity to carry on paint-ing, but Bobby’s head’s got a rock in it instead of abrain and soon sleep takes over. He ends up squashedon the remainder of the mattress like a brokenSticklebrick.The instant relief of deep slumbers dropshim straight into the same hole as Georgie, but just ashe begins to snore the front door goes blam-blam-BLAM and he’s spatten back out again. Poor Bobbythe Artist. He rolls off the edge of the double bed, rubshis mop-top to and fro for a bit, then staggers sadly tothe door as the next blam-blam-BLAM begins.Although he was only asleep for a millisecond it feelsas if he’s been brought out of a coma, and he can onlyoffer extreme hostility to the Express Pizza boy stand-ing there in the corridor. ‘What?’ Bobby the Artistsnaps.The pizza boy wobbles a bit, dressed in his dingyolive-green company T-shirt and holding out the 12”box like a riot shield. ‘Americano,’ he mumbles, offer-ing it. ‘What?’ Bobby the Artist snaps. ‘Americano,’ thepizza boy repeats, feeling all shitty. Bobby doesn’t mean

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to be a dickhead, but after a night gurning his chops offthe last thing he wants is a fucking pizza crust to chewon. Bobby’s about to slam the door in the pizza boy’smush, but then he remembers all those parties and sit-ins round Johnnie and Ellen’s and the two of themalways munching Americano pizzas, and he goes, ‘Youwant 5E not 4E. See you later then.’ As the door slapsshut, the Express boy pushes his bottom lip out thenpushes on up the stairs. He hates his crap delivery job,especially when you get sent to weird tower blocks inthe centre of dodgy estates, and people can be so rudesometimes. He passed his driving test first-go at ageseventeen and got the job at Express at eighteen, and atfirst it was quite fun hurtling round town scoffing freeHawaiians, but the novelty wore off when he startedgetting lots of abuse, and when he started getting thespare-tyre belly. It’s heart-wrenching trying to getmoney off stubborn cunts, usually hard-case lads at aparty who grab the pizza then tell you to fuck off invarious ways. Then you get back to the kitchens andMr Ashram clips you round the head and grumbles andyou feel like dog poo-poo.The Express boy sighs, step-ping gingerly down the vinyl corridor as he searchesfor 5E. What he really wants to be is a fighter-planepilot. Squinting in the fluorescent white light, heknocks three times on the correct door then holds outthe pizza, bracing himself for more abuse. And hecouldn’t have knocked at a worse time – Johnnie andEllen are in the bedroom having completely awful sex.As a rule their sex is typically shite with neither ofthem reaching orgasm,but this particular session reach-es an all-time low. After getting in from pilfering

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phones and suchlike, Johnnie slept next to Ellen tillmidday then drank some flat White Ace and orderedthe Americano on the promise of a quickie with hisgirlfriend. But it’s a longie – Ellen managed to get himhard, stripping down to dandelion knickers andstroking her nails down his balls, but she was unable toget any sort of wetness going herself what withJohnnie’s pathetic attempts at stabbing his fingers intoher fanny, and when he swapped fingers for knob hemight as well have been shagging a hole in the road.And thirty-seven minutes later it’s not any more enjoy-able for either of them.The front door suddenly goesblam-blam-BLAM, and Johnnie and Ellen prise them-selves apart with equal parts relief and exasperation.Ellen drops back on the covers with an all-red mingewhile Johnnie yanks on his Boro FC dressing-gownand stamps through the flat like the Incredible Sulk.‘What?’ he snaps, opening the door to the Express boy.He’d forgotten all about the Americano.The ‘quickie’should’ve been over ages ago, leaving Johnnie andEllen in a warmish trance ready to gobble down somedinner. The pizza boy winces, then sucks in a littlebreath and mumbles, ‘Americano?’ Johnnie just yanksthe 12” box off him, tosses the door shut and leaves theExpress boy with a good old-fashioned, ‘Fuck off.’ Hestomps his bare feet across the dog-eared carpet, growl-ing to himself as he hops back into bed, then him andEllen eat the pizza in painful silence. Ellen’s tuckedunder the duvet again with a few undergarments backon, and she crunches her teeth softly with a face likesour cream. Useless prick. The most annoying part isshe loves Johnnie as a person (he looks after her, he’s

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funny, he lets her live at the flat, he owns drugs . . . ),but sex to her is the most wonderful part of a relation-ship and it feels like getting raped every time he’s withher. With other lads it used to be lovely after a goodfuck just to lie all tangled up chatting nonsense, butafter a session with Johnnie she just wants to die. OftenEllen sucks him off in the beginning in the hope ofhim coming quickly and then not being in the moodfor full-on sex. It kills him. Johnnie’s sexual prowess isbased largely on hardcore pornography, where butchmen gang-bang vulnerable ladies, and where foreplaymeans sticking your hand up the cunt or getting askull-fuck, and every episode ends in the man gobbinghot white filth in the girl’s mush. It’s strange how anyhetero man’s worst nightmare would be having a hardcock shoved up his arse, and yet their ultimate fantasywould be shoving theirs up a lady’s. Admittedly,Johnnie has been able to make past girlfriends orgasmbut those were the dominant types, riding his cock intoall the right places. On one occasion, with this girlSharon, he accidentally found the clitoris. Johnniewonders if Ellen’s just fucked so many lads she’sbecome picky and pernickety about how she likes it,but there go them jealous thoughts again. Johnniescrews his face up, finishing the chewy Americano,feeling absolutely tortured. He wonders what it isabout sex with Ellen that just doesn’t hit the spot – thegirls in the pornos all scream like cheery monsters!Maybe their bits don’t fit together properly, or maybethey’re just unlucky.The sex did get off to a crap start:Johnnie and Ellen first shagged each other on a Saturdayback in January, and Johnnie remembers waking up that

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morning with the shits after a bad Hot Shot Parmo.Him and his boys had been on a bit of a binge thenight before, hammering the ecstasy and cheapo Cas-sini, oh and a Parmesan. Today Johnnie doesn’t reallytake pills after suffering a wee bit of depression, butback in January he could nail ten in a night and stilldrive the Nissan Sunny home without much bother,and buzz off his tits. So anyway, the day after this bingehe had severe diarrhoea, and spent most of the morn-ing sat on the lav in his family home somewhere downOrmesby. It was definitely the Parmo – his matey Bellowarned him it was a bit on the old side, but Johnniewas pissed and he hadn’t come up yet and he hadn’teaten owt.You could smell the sloppy chicken in thebottom of the toilet bowl. It was disgusting, but oncehe flushed it away the bathroom didn’t stink so muchand Johnnie started feeling better right away. He firstnoticed Ellen at the Jobcentre in a miniskirt and amberPuma top: she signed on at 10.33, Johnnie signed on at10.36.After a few fortnights of shyness, they got talkingand now and then Johnnie would bump into her wan-dering around town with her mates and a load ofshopping bags. One night at the Purple Onion theyhad a kiss and a grope, and the week after that at thedole she got his number and, just as Johnnie was clean-ing his bottom, she vibrated in his trousers. ‘Beep-beep!’ said the phone. Ellen was wanting to meet himat Aruba that night, not so much a date but just check-ing he’d be out and whether or not his dole camethrough on time.There’d been problems with the pay-ments going through over Christmas, what with staffshortages and p-p-p-paperwork, but that morning

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checking her balance at Halifax Ellen had a crisp£176.14 and she wanted to go out and get pissed andperhaps shag that charming, pale boy she’d found at theJobcentre Plus. Ellen’s attractive according to most menand despicable according to most girls (dripping toffeehair, too skinny, cream foundation acne, and a goodarse even in her jogging bottoms), the type of girl whofucks a lad until she gets fucked about then fucks off tothe next one, but she always seems happy. Johnnie had-n’t had sex for four months so he said yes he’d meet upwith her, and he rallied up a few of his less-favouritemates, and they all got pissed and supercharged inSpensley’s before heading under the flyover to Aruba.The club had the bluey glitzy look of an aquarium butinstead of fishies was full of skinhead lads in horizontal-stripe sweatshirts trying to pull, and noodle-haired girlslooking sour in minimum clothes. Johnnie was prettyembarrassed meeting Ellen in a place like that – heused to go a lot when he was sixteen or seventeen,except back then it was the Royal Exchange and heused to exchange spit with girls without much hassle.His loudmouth patter gets him most things he wantsout of life, despite him being rather ugly. And sureenough, by eleven o’clock he’d hooked up with Ellenand the two of them were bantering happily abouteach other and taking the mickey out of strangerswhile they sat together on the space-age settees.Johnnie liked to think of himself as a perceptive per-son, and he could clock all the signs of a prospectiveshag on the cards: Ellen’s leg crossed in his direction,occasional stroking of the knee, over-the-top laughterat anything he said, snogs with more and more tongue.

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Cover design by Faber. Cover illustration by Wallzo

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Richard Milward was born in Middlesbroughin 1984. His debut novel,Apples, was publishedin 2007.

9 780571 242252

ISBN 978-0-571-24225-2

uk £10.99 rrp www.faber.co.uk

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